Red Horizon: Contemporary Art and Photography
in the USSR and Russia, 1960–2010
Drew Sawyer & Tyler Cann (Eds.)8 x 11 in. / 176 pp / Extensive b&w and color
Featuring more than 200 images, Red Horizon explores art made during the period shortly after Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and beyond, when artists attempted to represent the growing gap between government-sanctioned orthodoxies and life as it was in the USSR and Russia. This timely survey, coinciding with the centennial of the Russian Revolution, is drawn from two facets of Neil K. Rector’s renowned art collection: Soviet and Russian photography from the 1970s to the early 1990s, and the work of Moscow-based unofficial artists who came to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s.
Two introductory essays by Tyler Cann and Drew Sawyer examine the works in these two extraordinary collections, contextualizing them in the broader political and artistic climates. Additional essays by art historians Matthew Jesse Jackson, Myroslava Mudrak, Ksenia Nouril, and Gleb Tsipursky address themes such as symbols of the Soviet state, the return of modernism, landscape and memory, and the tension between folk and mass cultures. Combining documentary photography, conceptual art, painting, and more, Red Horizon offers fresh perspective on the art and life of this period, and suggests how creativity and critical thinking manifest themselves under the most difficult social and ideological circumstances.
Among the artists and photographers included are Gennady Bodrov, Eric Bulatov, Andrey Chezhin, Ivan Chuikov, Vladimir Filonov, Sergei Gitman, Eduard Gladkov, Farit Gubaev, Laura Ilyina, Francisco Infante, , Ilya Kabakov, Komar & Melamid, Alexander Kosolapov, Sergey Kozhemyakin, Nikolai Kulebiakin, Vladimir Kuprianov. Mikhail Ladeishikov, Igor Lagunov, Alexander Lapin, Sergey Leontiev, Evgeny Likhosherst, Boris Mikhalevkin, Igor Moukhin, Irina Nakhova, Vladimir Nemukhin, Victor Pivovarov, Oleg Poleshuk, Yuri Rybtchinski, Igor Savchenko, Valery Shchekoldin, Mark Shteinbock, Victor Shurov, Leonid Sokov, Vladimir Syomin, Alexander Slussarev, Boris Smelov, Eduard Steinberg, Vyatcheslav Tarnovetsky, Alexey Titarenko, Oleg Tselkov, Oleg Vassiliev, Rifkhat Yakupov, Vladimir Yankilevsky, and Marina Yurchenko.
